Jeff Flake: Trump Is Kind of Like Josef Stalin in Banning Press Freedoms

Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., said Sunday he would compare President Trump to Soviet Union dictator Joseph Stalin when it comes to press freedom in a series of speeches he plans to make this week.

Flake argued that Trump was using the same tactics that Stalin did to de-legitimize the press.

"When you reflexively refer to the press as the 'enemy of the people' or 'fake news,' that has real damage. It has real damage to our standing in the world. And I noted how — how bad it is for a president to take [the phrase that] was popularized by Joseph Stalin, 'the enemy of the people,' to refer to the press," Flake, one of Trump's most persistent Republican critics, told ABC News Sunday.

In an excerpt of the planned speech, Flake said, "It bears noting that so fraught with malice was the phrase 'enemy of the people' that even Nikita Khrushchev [Stalin's successor as leader of the Soviet Union] forbade its use. And of course, the president has it precisely backward. Despotism is the enemy of the people, the free press is the despot's enemy."